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How F1's Azerbaijan GP led to Piastri, Leclerc battle: Misjudgment and 'half an opportunity'

15 September 2024Last Update :
How F1's Azerbaijan GP led to Piastri, Leclerc battle: Misjudgment and 'half an opportunity'

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The Azerbaijan Grand Prix ended under a virtual safety car, but it maintained the exciting tension that had built up throughout the race.

The Formula One grand prix had flashes of intriguing moments early on, like Lando Norris starting P15 and charging up the midfield to gain three spots by lap two and Max Verstappen reporting after 20 or so laps that his brakes weren’t working. (He was told it was temperature-related). A title battle stirs between the Dutchman and the Briton. Norris finished fourth and Verstappen fifth, narrowing the gap between them to 59 points.

But their fight isn’t where most fans’ attention was on Sunday.

Oscar Piastri made a daring move on Lap 20 down the inside of Charles Leclerc, full sending it into the first corner to take the lead from the Ferrari driver. It was a now-or-never moment. Piastri stuck the move and held on, putting on a defensive masterclass that left former F1 driver and his manager, Mark Webber, describing the day to Sky Sports as “one of the best drives I’ve ever seen him pull off.”

Though Leclerc and Piastri took the spotlight, there was also a three-way battle for P1 at times, with Sergio Pérez (the only repeat winner at Baku) tailing the leaders. Leclerc reported that his rear tires were gone in the closing laps, and when Pérez tried to make a move, the Ferrari driver quickly closed the door. But then Carlos Sainz zipped past the Red Bull, and moments later, the two tangled and triggered a virtual safety car.

The crash created a chain reaction, like George Russell securing an unlikely podium finish and Oliver Bearman passing Nico Hülkenberg because the veteran reported hitting debris. In the end, the stewards deemed the Sainz-Pérez crash a racing incident and took no further action after reviewing how the crash happened.

It may not have been a flat-out mad dash at the end, but Piastri pulled off a massive feat. He made a few mistakes along the way, but a daring move and skillful defending led to a triumphant victory and pushed McLaren into the lead of the constructors’ standings for the first time in a decade.

“That ranks as probably the best win of my career, I would say,” Piastri said. “Trying to soak up that pressure for so long in that race that was incredibly tough.”

Where Leclerc feels he lost the race

Ferrari’s weekend ended with mixed feelings. It went from possibly having both drivers on the podium to settling for Leclerc’s second-place finish and a hefty repair job before Singapore next weekend due to the Sainz-Pérez incident.

Leclerc converted his fourth consecutive pole position at Baku into an early lead, controlling the pace of the race from the get-go. He started the race on a new set of medium tires and pitted on Lap 16, emerging ahead of Piastri. It became evident that a fight was coming, given that the McLaren driver’s tires were warming up quicker from pitting a lap earlier. After three laps, Piastri dove down the inside of Leclerc at Turn 1 and stuck the maneuver, never letting go of the lead.

The move didn’t surprise Leclerc, per se. He could see Piastri was a bit to the left in his mirrors, and he was still working to get his hard tires up to temperature. “I just thought it wasn’t that much of a big deal if he would overtake me at that point of the race,” Leclerc said, “because the race was still long and the DRS would help me to stay within a second of him and then once my tires will be in temperature I could overtake him again.”

The next moment to attempt an overtake never arose, he said, “just because we were too slow in the straights.”

Baku City Circuit requires a compromise regarding car set-ups because of its tight twisting corners and long straight. Leclerc said that Ferrari and McLaren had different configurations.

“We had a bit more downforce, which made us quite quick in the castle section,” Leclerc said. “However, in all the straights they were flying. And that’s probably where I lost the race.

“I misjudged that.”

Because Leclerc pitted on lap 16, he needed to make the hard tire last more than 30 laps, a vast majority of which he spent in dirty air. He struggled immediately after emerging from the pits and quickly realized McLaren had more grip on the harder compound.

He said he was “quite calm” when Piastri overtook him, with just over half of the race still to go. “I just was focusing on my tire management, which I did. And after 10, 15 laps, I thought that everything was coming together and that maybe towards the end, we will be in a better place. But with the dirty air, I think for 20, 25 laps towards the end, my tires were completely gone.”

Besides not fighting Piastri more on that early maneuver, the other misjudgment was how quickly Leclerc lost his time advantage. He was six seconds ahead of the McLaren driver when Piastri pitted. When Leclerc emerged from the pits, it was fairly equal.

“We expected the undercut today to be a very difficult thing to do, just because we thought that the warm-up on the hard would be extremely difficult for some reason. I don’t really have the explanation yet because I haven’t gone into details,” Leclerc said. “I just jumped out of the car, but we’ve got to look into how the gap went from six seconds to one and a half, because that is definitely not what we expected. And that is a lot.

“Even on a track where undercuts are big, it’s still four seconds and a half or four seconds – a lot of lap time loss, which I don’t exactly know why and where we’ve lost this lap time.”

What won Piastri the race

During the first stint, it looked like Leclerc could secure a second consecutive win and draw Ferrari further into the constructors’ title race. Piastri dropped out of DRS range and didn’t quite have the pace to challenge at that time.

“In the first stint, when Charles was just pulling away pretty comfortably, I thought we were going to be second at best,” Piastri said. “Even (Pérez) was keeping me very honest, and I could see Carlos was very quick at the end of the medium stint.”

But switching to the hard tires gave the car more life. Soon after the pit stop, Piastri saw what he described as “half an opportunity” arise.

“I felt like we had a little bit of extra grip, and I had to go for it because I knew that if I didn’t get past the start of the stint, I was never going to get past,” Piastri said, “so I went for a pretty big lunge, but managed to pull it off, and then hung on for dear life for the next 35 laps.”

It is one thing to take the lead but another to hold it for two-thirds of a race. Piastri felt “the key was actually hanging on in Sector 2,” which is the castle portion. He took a lot of risks in that section of the track, finding ways to build the gap from Turn 7 onward.

“I had a couple of close calls through the castle and Turn 15 as well. I think the guys probably need to put another rear corner on my car after the race.”

Being in clean air also helped.

“It’s what won me the race,” Piastri said. “I felt a bit sorry for my race engineer because I basically tried to do that in the first stint and completely cooked my tires. So my engineer came on the radio and said, ‘Let’s not do that again,’ basically. And I completely ignored him the next lap and sent it down the inside.”

Looking back on the move that got him into the lead, Piastri was surprised that he made it stick, calling it “a high-risk, high-commitment move” necessary for a shot at winning. With another P1 to his name, he has scored 135 points over the last seven race weekends, the most across the grid. Norris has scored 104 points in that span, and Verstappen scored 94.

Though not a fan of “cherry-picking” such statistics, he acknowledges where he and McLaren are now, with a car that’s “consistently quick” at most tracks.

“And even if we’ve not necessarily been the outright quickest everywhere, we’ve been in with a chance everywhere,” Piastri said. “And I think today was definitely one of those days where we weren’t necessarily the quickest, but we had a car that could put us in the fight. We had a pit stop that could put us in the fight. We had some teamwork that put us in the fight. And it all managed to pay off.”

This is only Piastri’s second season in F1, and he said the things he’s wanted to improve from his rookie year have “been clicking a bit more.”

“You combine that with a car that’s capable of winning, and results like this are possible,”

What this means on a larger scale

There has been plenty of talk about the brewing title battle between Norris and Verstappen. The Dutchman still has a firm grip on the drivers’ standings — a 59-point gap between him and the McLaren driver. But even before the Azerbaijan GP, Norris had bigger threats behind him, with Leclerc, Piastri and Sainz not far off.

The top ten in the driver standings is now as follows:

The McLaren teammates are separated by just 32 points. There is an understanding within McLaren that when it comes to which driver to prioritize in the coming weeks, the team will back Norris — and Piastri is in agreement. Teamwork will be necessary for both titles, though. Ferrari is a credible threat, 51 points separating the two camps.

Consistency is key at this point in the year, particularly with how Red Bull is struggling compared to its recent domination period.

“Considering where we started when I joined the team last year, we were literally last. And now we are leading the world championship. So it’s a full credit to the team for the turnaround we’ve managed to have in my 18 months here,” Piastri said Sunday. “Firstly, in terms of improving the car, but helping me improve as well. Results like this definitely weren’t possible 12 months ago for myself. So it’s a massive team effort. Excited to see what the future holds.”

Top photo: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)

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